by Tim Jeal
Paul shook his head again and presented her, from behind his back, with a scrappy bouquet of leaves. ‘Herida asked me to give it to you.’
‘What for?’
‘You boil the leaves and drink the water.’ Paul lowered his eyes. ‘It is for the girls who cannot have a baby.’
Clara smiled in spite of herself. ‘Can you thank her, please?’ Paul was confused and embarrassed. ‘It’s because Herida laid a curse on me,’ she explained. ‘Now she’s trying to lift it.’
Just then the drums struck up again, the long, low introductory thumps followed by staccato beats that drowned out every other sound.
*
Hannah did not return the following day, and in the evening, abandoning his misgivings, a distraught Paul said he meant to go and see the dancing. ‘Hannah will be there.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Clara asked anxiously.
‘I will bring her back.’
‘Against her will, Paul? You can’t do that.’
‘She was taken against her will, Mrs Robert.’ The fact that Paul was probably mistaken alarmed Clara. He was certainly angry enough to try to drag Hannah out from the midst of a swaying mass of excitable people. And yet Clara was so eager to see the dances that she had no intention of saying anything that might discourage him.
As she and Paul set out for the clearing where the boyale dances were taking place, darkness was falling. The subdued radiance of the stars lit the twisting track dimly and helped them elude Mponda’s guards. Occasionally, a nightjar fluttered up from near their feet. The drumming and singing were growing louder. Soon they could hear the scuffling of the dancers’ feet. Sparks from the ceremonial fires were rising high into the blackness. Urgently wanting to know how dangerous these people could be, Clara pulled fiercely on Paul’s arm to make him stop. In a moment they would be leaving the shelter of the thorn trees and mongongo bushes.
‘Paul,’ she whispered, ‘did you ever hear why Simon ran away?’
‘Nashu tried to make him take the poison ordeal.’ Grasping Clara’s hand tightly, Paul hurried her on.
At the end of the scrubby bushes, they came to a halt. Ahead of them in the firelight, about a hundred young men and women stood in opposite rows, with nothing but a simple cloth wrapped around their waists. Soft drumbeats set them moving, slowly at first. Both sexes danced into the middle, in a figure that reminded Clara absurdly of a Sir Roger de Coverley. Yet soon the pace increased, and they began a series of complicated hops and agile sideways skips that threw their little skirts high. The rhythm was beaten out on a row of large and small drums. As it became faster, the dancers shrieked and shouted as they jumped in the air. The girls’ naked breasts shook and quivered, and the boys thrust their hips at their partners in a mime of lovemaking. The earth answered their feet like a great drum. Clara caught her breath. This is how they ought to be, not bent over copybooks. Such power and grace of body, muscles twisting like snakes under their shining skin. Her nerves tingled at the insistent drumming; the upraised voices made her spirits soar.
And then she looked at Paul. His normally placid face was scored with anger. He tried to sound calm but had to shout to make himself heard. ‘Now they forget hunger, even death, but later nothing is changed. They will be sad then.’
Clara felt indignant. ‘Is that what Robert says?’
Paul did not answer. His eyes were fixed on a female dancer near the drums. Clara suddenly recognized Hannah. The fever of the dance was sparking lightning from her body, shaking it from within. Before Clara could stop him, Paul was pushing his way through the crowds of swaying and gyrating people. She saw his arm raised as he struck Hannah, and then he was struggling with other women, who were trying to protect her. In the scuffle, Paul and several women fell against the drums, knocking them over. A threatening silence fell.
A man screamed abuse at Paul, and others ran at him. Clara started in his direction, fearing he might be lynched. As she reached his side, two furious men were being held back by a dozen others, and Paul was shouting at a sobbing Hannah.
The sight of so many sombre faces in the firelight chilled Clara to the bone. She took Paul’s arm, and, unresisting, he let her guide him through the crowd. She did not know how she overcame the urge to run.
Paul was coming away without Hannah, but he was lucky to be coming away at all.
CHAPTER 10
Garbed in his full panoply of monkeys’ tails, eagles’ feathers, and leopards’ claws, Nashu solemnly approached the place of circumcision, followed by men bearing the sacred vessels. These contained the ashes of countless foreskins, linking today’s candidates with past generations. Never had the nganga felt a greater sense of responsibility to his tribe and a greater sense of dread.
So the young schoolteacher had damaged the drums at the boyale dances after insulting the initiates. And why had he dared commit this sacrilege? Because he believed that the chief would soon be washed with the white man’s most powerful medicine. No less painful to Nashu was his own daughter’s treachery. Herida had been seen outside the white woman’s door, dressed in one of the white sacks worn by the mfungu’s converts. What a fool to imagine she would remain the chief’s wife if she pretended to believe the mfungu’s wicked nonsense. The white man would never let an nganga’s daughter be the chief’s only queen. Her folly and disloyalty made Nashu want to bite the earth and howl.
Not far from Nashu, the chief’s son was exhorting the boys to be brave. Many days ago, Makufa had promised that before the male circumcision rites took place, he would tell Nashu when he would strike against his father. Around the tall young prince, the naked boys clustered in a fearful little semicircle. As Nashu sharpened his knife on the stone at the foot of the ancient mugumo tree, Makufa left his charges and came over to him.
He squatted down beside the nganga and whispered with a heavy sigh, ‘I cannot kill my father.’
Nashu eyed him scornfully. ‘But you know very well that every chief who is washed with this medicine one day sells his land to the white men. Isn’t it the same story wherever a preacher settles? He is one man alone, so people suspect nothing. But soon come the traders and the farmers with their fences. If people argue, soldiers come and shoot them. I never lie to you, Makufa. The white men will make us pay to live in our huts. This has happened in Bulawayo and Gwelo.’
‘Lord of the Spirits, I know you do not lie.’
Nashu shuffled closer like an old eagle. Blood-red discs had been painted on each side of his eyes. ‘The white woman is dangerous too,’ he rasped. ‘She took a child and cursed him when he ran away. She told the young teacher to smash the boyale drums. Now she is stealing my daughter’s heart. She will bewitch us all when Mponda takes the water medicine.’
‘My father will never take it.’ He smiled grimly. ‘There will be no one alive to give it to him.’
Nashu spat scornfully. ‘How can we kill the mfungu when he is far from here?’
‘We will kill the others in their wooden house when they sing. The mfungu will die too if he returns, but he will vanish when he hears what we have done.’
‘The woman also dies?’ Nashu gestured obscenely with his knife.
‘All of them.’
‘What will your father do?’
Makufa shrugged, as if his father’s actions were scarcely worth considering. ‘We’ll tell him that Mwari’s messengers ordered their death. We needn’t be there. I’ll say the rebellion started by itself. He knows Mwari has decreed that all the whites must die.’
‘Very well,’ said Nashu. ‘Let it be done on the next day they sing.’
After Makufa had returned to the clay-painted boys, Nashu gazed up at the gnarled and mysterious mugumo tree. His father had brought him here as a boy when the village had been two days’ walk away. He had not yet been circumcised and had longed for his penis to be freed from its hood of flesh so he could be a man. His father had said, ‘Where Mwari placed his hand this tree sprouted. From its branches you can see Mount Rungai, Mwari’s hom
e.’ They had climbed up together into the leaves. Far away to the east across the bush had been a blue hill. Young Nashu had wept with joy at the sight of Mwari’s home. And now all this might be sold to the white man, and the ancestors’ sacred tree be felled.
Four moons ago, when Nashu had heard that three young white men had come north from Belingwe and were digging near Mount Rungai, he and Makufa had hurried there and killed them as they slept. Another day or two, and they would have desecrated Mwari’s natal cave. But the white men were like soldier ants. More and more would come; and then what could he do? Nashu felt a dull pain in his heart, as if he were fighting a force that pressed in on him from the air itself.
‘God is everywhere and knows everything. There is none righteous among you, not one. Little can you know what grossness shrouds your minds. Your ignorance is a fog through which you wade in filth and sin.’
Nashu had sometimes listened to Philemon, the traitor, spouting his master’s words, and had been dazed by the man’s blasphemous conviction. How could he believe that a white man without a father, born in a goatshed, was really God? The man’s lies made Nashu long to kill him. How could it be right to have one wife only, when a chief needed many wives in order to have many children and thus be a power in this tribe? And without many wives to grow food, a chief could neither give feasts nor feed slaves and strangers. And what was this talk of a man requiring salvation for himself alone? Had he no duty to others? Unless men and women shared grain in a famine and sowed and reaped together, the tribe could not survive. Nashu’s whole body ached with grief. Only one course was open to him. The land must be cleansed and these foreigners wiped from the face of the earth.
He beckoned to the first of the candidates to come forward. A desolating thought possessed him. Was it possible that the children of these boys would one day worship the white man’s God and never come near this holy place? His throat ached at the thought.
The first boy lay down, and Makufa parted his legs. There would be three cuts. Nashu pulled the foreskin clear of the glans and sliced cleanly from right to left. A white ridged line suddenly turned brilliant red. The boy looked up at him with icy stoicism. No longer need he bow to an older person or be touched on the head in greeting. Nashu cut again, and his spirit leapt with the joy of a trust fulfilled. As the boy floated on waves of pride and pain, Nashu marked his forehead with white clay to protect him from the evil ones.
*
Early in the morning, Clara had sometimes gone with Hannah to fetch milk from the mission. But now when Clara went, it was alone. To the amusement of the kitchen boys, she would sit on one of the stools and pull at the stiff teats, her cheek resting against the cow’s warm belly. She loved the milky smell of the filling pails and the animals’ docile eyes. On one such morning, arriving at the mission gate, Clara stumbled on what she took to be a pile of rags. She looked down and gasped to see, staring up at her, old Footman’s lifeless eyes. His face was thick with blood and flies. A ragged hole gaped where his throat had been.
She stood swaying dizzily for a moment before running to summon Philemon. Shaking uncontrollably, she watched the old man hurry off in search of the chief’s men. But when he came back, he was alone. For some reason, the bodyguards had not followed Clara’s movements as usual. Strange too was the silence that blanketed the village. When Philemon had gathered together enough people to bring in the body, Clara watched the sad procession as it approached the veranda. With a prickle of terror, she recalled the sullen faces of the boyale dancers.
By the time Paul came to help dig a grave, there was more ordinary activity in the village, and Philemon was no longer obviously on edge. But then some warriors in war paint were seen near the khotla, and everyone became scared again. The boy Matiyo was sent racing off towards the chief’s crag, and a long and nerve-racking wait began, with everyone fearful that Mponda might already be powerless to send help.
Clara went out to the little cemetery beyond the cattle kraal, where Paul was digging. ‘If only master could be here,’ he sighed as he rested on his spade.
‘What would he do?’ asked Clara. She tried to dig but stopped abruptly as the spade jarred against the brick-hard earth. She had been troubled for a day or two by pain under her right toenail, and the sudden pressure made it throb sharply.
‘Master always knows what to do,’ insisted Paul.
‘He’s just a man like you,’ said Clara.
Paul shook his head. ‘Master makes everyone brave. You should see him when there is danger.’
Clara stared into the shallow grave and found herself longing for the reassurance of Robert’s physical presence. He had lived through so many menacing situations that he would know at once if they ought to leave. She pressed her foot down on the spade, but the pain under her nail was a pinprick to the stab of truth that seared her mind. If Robert was dead, the men who had killed him would already be closing in. Unless he returned, there would be no hope for anyone else.
Matiyo came back from the crag shortly before noon, accompanied by two men sent by the chief. They were not the ones who had watched over her before, and they carried short stabbing spears but no guns. Clara shared the general sense of disappointment. Mponda had not deserted them, but he was clearly unwilling to make Footman’s murder grounds for an immediate trial of strength. Clara’s dread deepened when Chizuva slipped away without a word.
Yet not everyone was upset. Mabo was absorbed by her knitting, and several women were sewing calmly. The kitchen boys, Serame and Jonas, sang as they chopped logs into fuel for the oven. They reminded her of pantomime pirates – Serame in his rakish, greasy grey tam-o’-shanter and Jonas in his dress coat held together by part of an old quilt. They had come here through trust in Robert rather than faith in Jesus, and Clara hated to think of their confusion if the white man’s magic failed. But was she, perhaps, getting everything out of proportion? A helpless old man had been murdered, but should that mean the world was coming to an end? His death need be linked neither to Paul’s behaviour at the boyale dance nor to the events that Robert feared.
By the time she sat down to eat sadza with Paul and Philemon, Clara was a little calmer. Then Jonas came in with water and said that Footman’s precious handkerchief could not be found.
Understanding the general sense of this without translation, Clara asked Paul, ‘What does it matter if the thing’s disappeared?’
‘It was yours, so people may use it to harm you.’
‘You know that’s all nonsense.’
But Paul did not look as though he knew any such thing, and Clara recalled Robert’s warning to bury her nail clippings. Robert’s two-week absence had one more day to run. Tomorrow would be Sunday, but Clara doubted whether any people would come to chapel from the village. Everyone would know about Footman’s murder and the attack on the women. Probably only the mission Christians would be there.
Herida chose to present herself at the mission in the early afternoon of this inauspicious day. She was enveloped in the white sacking she had been wearing for days. Ignoring the distress around her, she demanded to be taught. Mission ‘children’ screamed in her face. How dared she come, when her father had murdered poor Footman? Did she think she could come and be a spy in their midst? But Clara told Philemon to remind the women that Herida had protected them only days before. ‘Explain that Nashu will not attack us if his daughter is here.’
After a long discussion, Paul and Philemon agreed that Herida could remain. Yet seeing how loftily the young beauty looked at the men and women around her, Clara was not sure that she ought to have argued her cause quite so strongly. Herida even refused to speak to her when Paul was nearby. He was a lowly Makalaka, a ‘mere thing’, while she was a queen. At her urging, Philemon relayed to Clara Herida’s justification of the harsh but entirely proper requirements of rank. These would of course make it impossible for her to learn to sew. Servants alone required such skills. Nor would she be able to read and write unless Philemon could give her
his undivided attention. Though shocked by such arrogance, Clara was ready to make allowances for an unhappy woman.
Later that afternoon, Herida noticed that Clara was limping and caused astonishment by indicating that she wished to examine the white woman’s foot. She looked at it closely and then shouted something to Philemon, who borrowed a needle from one of the sewing women.
‘You have a jigger under your nail,’ murmured the old preacher, handing over the needle to Herida. ‘The young lady wishes to remove it for you. She wants me to tell you that until today she has done such a thing only for her husband.’
Clara thanked her in Venda and gritted her teeth as the delicate probing began. Herida said something to Clara, and Philemon murmured, ‘She says that burrowing fleas can breed enough to eat away a whole toe.’
‘Don’t tell me that!’ Clara laughed.
With remarkable dexterity, Herida swiftly picked out a tiny sac of grubs and crushed it between her fingers. Clara was grateful, though she knew Philemon was still suspicious of Herida’s motives.
Footman was buried in a calico shroud, which had to be sewn up by Clara since the other women were against wasting good cloth on a man without relations. After conducting the burial, Philemon overtook Clara as she paused by the cattle kraal fence.
‘He is in heaven now,’ said the old man, and added, almost in the same breath, ‘Herida is clever. She thinks her father will depose Mponda, but she guesses the chief still has a chance to win. She makes friends with us in case he does.’ Philemon’s face crinkled with disapproval. ‘She wants to cause mischief for Chizuva too.’
‘That doesn’t mean she hasn’t thrown in her lot with the Christians,’ replied Clara.
‘Against her father?’ asked Philemon with unconcealed scepticism. ‘Why is that, Nkosikaas?’
‘She may think it’s the best way to keep her husband.’
Philemon made a show of considering this, but from the tortoise-like retraction of his leathery neck, she knew he was unconvinced. ‘She will be Judas, Nkosikaas. You will see.’